Chibi Drabbles
by nebroadwe
Summary: Anime or mangaverse. Vignettes from Ed, Al and Winry's childhood involving food, school, play, death and the inadvertent exchange of bodily fluids. Set mostly preseries.
1. Ghosts

_This is for Dave,_ requiescat in pace.

* * *

"Granny?" 

The whisper isn't even as loud as the tentative tap it follows, but Al's voice yanks Pinako right out of bed and over to the door in her nightdress. "What is it, child?"

He's nothing but eyes since the funeral, though she's tried to keep him fed and occupied. "I thought I saw a ghost."

She puts both hands firmly on his shoulders. "There's no such thing as ghosts."

Al bursts into tears. Ten seconds later, Ed erupts into the hall, pulling him away. "I told you not to ask her!" he scolds.

_Dammit._ Rebuked, Pinako bites her tongue.


	2. The Sneeze

_This is for Lucy and Noël, who might actually get it. _

* * *

The tickle in his nose is driving him crazy. Al suggested looking at the sky, but left when nothing happened, bored by his brother's complaints. Stretched out under the maple, Ed wriggles impatiently and squints again at the sun through the leaves. 

Winry skips by, then backtracks and leans over him. "What'cha doing?"

"I'm -- " he says, and the sneeze explodes right into her face.

"Eww!" She recoils, arms flailing; he rolls over and prudently turtles. "Edward Elric, that's GROSS!"

Scrubbing at her mouth, she runs off. He scrambles up and follows, sniffling thoughtfully, wondering if he can do it again.


	3. The Fly

_This is for Andrew, pop-culture maven and all-around helpful guy. Thanks!_

* * *

After the stone ended the fly-man's torment, the children walked home, pensive and shivering in the August sunshine. "I wonder how it worked," Winry said. "That machine."

"Alchemy?" Al suggested doubtfully.

"You can't do alchemy on humans," Ed objected.

"You shouldn't," Al corrected him. "But engines don't do things like that -- alchemy does."

Ed dragged his feet, chin down. "And he wasn't trying to make a chimera -- maybe you _could_ just disintegrate something and send it somewhere ... "

Winry stared at him. "What're you talking about? I meant the _projector_, dummy."

She broke into a run, leaving them to catch up.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** _It occurs to me that this drabble makes more sense if you know the basic plot of _The Fly_: a scientist, testing his newly-invented teleportation device, accidentally commingles his body with that of a fly. Bad Things ensue. (Ed and Al mention the film in passing in manga chapter 21.)_


	4. Gloria Totius Mundi

_This is for Kristin, again._

* * *

At first, they ignored what they couldn't read: their father's Amestrian books held treasure enough. But his notes defeated them, so now Ed attacks classical texts with dictionary and grammar, claiming knowledge as plunder. 

When he abandons the field, tired or frustrated or hungry, Al filches the grammars for study, intrigued by the passages from Homer and Caesar bivouacked among the rules and exercises. Someday, when all obscurities are fled and his mother can tuck him in again, he'll translate the whole _Odyssey_ by flashlight under the covers, though she nightly discover and scold him for such a transparent stratagem.

* * *

**Author's Note: **_This drabble's title is taken from a line in the _Tabula Smaragdina_, that odd little text which preoccupied so many of this universe's alchemists, including Sir Isaac Newton._


	5. Almost Like Mom's

_This is for my fellow Charter Orphans, in memory of that first apple pie._

* * *

Winry learned to cook after her parents' death. Pinako makes delicious soups (_"You can't kill soup, child"_) but not much else. She has no taste for sweets, either (_"Sugar rots your teeth and brain"_). If Winry wants gingerbread or oatmeal cookies, she has to bake them herself.

Her mother's recipe box was a masterclass in domestic chemistry; with Trisha Elric's help Winry muddled through failure (_"These taste like dog biscuits!" "How would you know?" "Uh ... "_) to competence (_"S'okay; can I have seconds?"_), pursuing excellence. As precious as Granny's _That'll do_ is Ed's admission, _This is almost as good as Mom's_.


	6. Tears

The first time Ed made Winry cry, they were playing hide-and-seek. He and Al, grinning underneath a wild rose bush, watched her searching everywhere else and didn't come out when she called the game over. She walked past them twice more, yelling their names, and they still didn't come out.

Then she started crying and they couldn't.

After she ran home, they followed, slowly. "I didn't know where you _were_!" she gulped when everyone stopped scolding to let the brothers apologize.

Though Ed hasn't learned how not to make Winry cry, he knows better than to hide when she does.


	7. Down By the Station

None of them has cens to waste, but they found the coin together under the station bench, so it's only fair to use it for something they can all enjoy. Winry and Al keep watch while Ed jumps off the platform and lays the cen on the near rail, then scrambles back up.

Ten minutes later the express rumbles through, car after car of coal headed west toward Central. They shield their faces from the cinder-laden wind of its passage. Afterward Ed retrieves the squashed coin and they laugh at Liberty's face, her sober smile distorted into a grimace.


	8. Hic Incipit Vita Nova

Winry graduates from eighth grade in a sleeveless blue dress with mother-of-pearl buttons ordered from the Sawyer and Hart catalog. She accepts her diploma demurely, mincing across the stage to polite applause, and waits until the ceremony is over to whoop and toss her hat in the air and hug everyone within reach.

The next morning, flush with ambition, she accompanies her grandmother to the notary to seal her indentures. The dress hangs for days on the chair where she threw it after Nelly's graduation party, but an apprentice automail engineer has more important things to worry about than clothes.**  
**

* * *

**Author's Note:** _The title of this drabble comes from a line in Dante Alighieri's famous collection of love poems, _La Vita Nuova_, and means, "Here begins the new life."  
_


	9. First Love

_This is for Joy and Sue and the Katies, who don't laugh when I try to write romance._

* * *

Al falls in love with Winry the day she rescues him.

Ed's home in bed sick, exposing his brother to ambush by the schoolyard gang they've defeated once too often. Steeling himself for martyrdom, Al hovers in the cloakroom until Winry unexpectedly grabs his arm and drags him outside past his would-be assassins. They won't stoop to fighting girls, so they're reduced to jeers (_"Elric's got a GIRLfriend!"_) which bounce off Al like cotton balls. Winry doesn't even blush. "Those jerks!" she says, defiantly taking his hand. "Wanna play hardware store?"

"Sure!" he replies, already hoping Ed's still sick tomorrow.


	10. Charmed Life

Like all children, they believe a really good game involves risk. But though Ed ringleads them through a hundred death-defying stunts each month, he collects nothing worse than scrapes and bruises falling out of trees or into bushes.

It's Winry, braking to avoid a cat crossing the road, who somersaults over her handlebars and spends a day in bed with a concussion.

It's Al, jumping from the Andersens' hayloft, who lands sideways on his ankle and has to be driven home in the dog-cart.

"You lead a charmed life, Edward," his mother sighs.

Ed grins. He knows it's true.


	11. Want Shall Be Your Master

The best things in life are free. Who needs electric trains or windup cars when you've got rocks to throw in the creek or frogs to hide in each other's desks on a dare? The boys can't understand why Winry, with the run of her grandmother's workbench, sighs over Lily's fancy, _'spensive_ china doll. Watching her suck up to Lily at recess makes Ed gag; watching Lily turn away makes Al frown. As Winry's face falls, the brothers' eyes meet, thinking of the same page in _Elementary Alchemy_ and the school sandbox.

But not then, not yet, of a price.


	12. Scheherazade

"Song, mama?" asks Al as Trisha lays him down.

"No, more story!" Ed, theoretically tucked in, has kicked his blankets into a tangle for her to straighten: anything to delay the moment his traitor body succumbs to sleep. No lullabies for him, but he hasn't realized the endless picaresque she spins might serve the same purpose.

" -- when he cut off the wolf's head, a bird flew out -- "

The bird sings for Al, telling the prince where to find the water of life. Ed grumbles, eyelids drooping, and the story runs on till he snores open-mouthed, to be continued another night.


	13. However Improbable

Al can't quite believe it's this simple. _Simple?_ Ed scoffs, reminding him of the weeks of research, the partial experiments, the reticulose equations that define their transmutation circle. Besides, people, even scientists, overlook the obvious all the time. Gravity existed for millennia before Newton published his _Principia_, didn't it?

Al has no counterargument, only wordless uneasiness. Ed thumps his brother in the shoulder as he always does, whether they're preparing to sled down Cutter's Cliff or eat fried worms on a bet. _We can do this. Trust me._

As always, Al returns the thump with interest. _Pass me the chalk._


	14. Outnumbered

Now and then the Elric brothers close ranks against Winry: _go away, we don't want you, we're busy!_ She wouldn't mind so much if they'd warn her ahead of time or at least explain why. _You're a GIRL!_ doesn't count. As her grandmother says, that's a fact, not an excuse.

Sometimes Al apologizes later, but neither boy ever tells her what they were up to. Eventually she pretends not to care, sheering off at the first sign of dismissal. She has her own projects, after all. Someday she'll show them what she learned while they were so busy without her.


	15. Legacies

Winry has her mother's pearls, a string of Creatan "fishes' tears" with a tricky clasp, sleeping in a velvet-lined silver box until the day she turns sixteen.

And she has her father's gold-plated pocket watch, its case engraved with a message from his fraternity brothers: _Facta non verba. 1897._

And she has their textbooks -- anatomy, physiology, surgery, obstetrics -- annotated in her mother's round Spencerian hand and her father's jittery medical scrawl. After the memorial service, she reads them over and over, listening to voices untouched by sorrow or time, discovering that knowledge is power, but learning is love.


	16. Treetop Travelers

Ed and Al spend their last truly happy summer up trees.

They summit them tied together with Winry's jump-rope, whispering to avoid starting an avalanche.

They sail them through pirate-ridden seas and howling equinoctical gales, prefacing every remark with "Ahoy!" or "Avast!" and calling each other "you lubber" until their mother makes them stop.

They try to ride them through the Eastern Desert to fabled Xing, but must abandon their faithful, desiccated, dying mounts to crawl toward what might be an oasis or merely a tantalizing mirage.

They could just climb them, but where's the fun in that?


	17. Paradise Lost

_This is for Lyra Ngalia, whose question prompted it.  
_

* * *

_When Al's heels slip, he obliges gravity and crashes down against the hillside, grinning even as he rubs his head. The Wrights' sheep cropped this pasture short and moved on: among the spreading patches of clover a veteran crackle protests the renewed invasion, pale blades scratching Al's calves and neck. But the narrow petals gathered gossip-close breathe sweetly around his head and the hot, clear sky shines bluer than gaslight, than denim in the washtub, than Winry's eyes suddenly staring upside-down into his._

_"Where've you been -- "_

" -- Al?" Ed yells from the platform. "C'mon -- we're gone!"

"I know," he answers.


	18. If Wishes Were Horses

Ed knows what he wants for his birthday: a red wagon. He tells his mother so, all the way to Riesenbuhl and home again, puffing its carrying capacity, so much greater than the marketing basket's. He pauses only to study the ridge where the Cutter boys court disaster with sleds; Trisha's wry smile passes unheeded.

Later, braced for her goodnight kiss, he asks, "D'you -- d'you think Dad'll be home for my birthday?"

Her lips graze his ear instead of his cheek; she murmurs something, _Wait and see_ or _We'll see_, but he's already muffled his careless mouth in the pillows.


	19. The Facts of Life

The boy remembers the day his innocence first began to dissipate, sublimating like dry ice. Some facts country folk learn early, so nobody warned him away from the barn or shielded him from anything but the cows' unpredictable hooves. Once cantankerous Daisy was safely stalled, Mr. Andersen squatted on a stool beside fat Bess, his head bent against her flank, her jaw working to the _shish-shish_ of milk into tin. The boy's eyes tracked the liquid from pail to source, then sprang wide._ He's pulling on its -- __**things!**_

"Want to try?" Mr. Andersen offered.

Nauseated, newly resolute, Edward Elric fled.


	20. What Now This Night I See

Pinako Rockbell believes you're old enough to hear the answers once you're old enough to ask the questions. So when her granddaughter wonders what the girl in the ballad was doing among the leaves so green, Pinako tells her. 

Winry walks wide around hedges for a few weeks afterward; then the boys come home and she has other things to think about: the blood on the floor, redder than any rose; the armor clanging louder than silver bells; and Ed and Al holding fast to each other through that long night, and all the nights thereafter, in their charmed circle.

* * *

**Author's Note:**_The ballad Winry is puzzling over is _Tam Lin_; the title of this drabble is a line from one of its many versions._


	21. Autodidact

At Riesenbuhl's school exercises, the scrubbed and shining junior grades always recite patriotic verses to the proud parents assembled in the classroom. Or almost always: one year, Ed reels off Newton's Three Laws of Motion instead of the inspiring couplet he's supposed to have memorized. Then the already nervous girl beside him (not Winry, who's reaching for some chalk to throw) doesn't know whether to speak his lines or her own and, before anyone can intervene, bursts into tears ...

Ed apologizes, eventually. But the teacher neither forgets nor forgives his indignant counter-accusation: "You _said_ this was supposed to be educational!"

* * *

**Author's Note:** _Ed's opinion of the educational value of poetry, patriotic or otherwise, is not necessarily that of the author. _


	22. Vectors

_This is for S.J. Smith and D.M. Evans, with accompanying get-well wishes._

* * *

Ed hates being sick even when it excuses him from school. His stomach rejects everything but toast and tea and his mind rattles around like a pebble in a tin can. After another exhausting day in bed, he labors over the makeup assignments his brother brought home, temper soured to crabapple bitterness by Winry's shrieks as she and Den chase Al around the yard. _Why's it always me? Why couldn't it've been him?_

That night he totters barefoot down the hall, each shivering step an atonement, to tell their mother that Al needs a basin and some ginger water, too.

* * *

**Author's Note:** _Ginger water is a folk remedy for nausea. This drabble can also be read as a companion piece to #9, "First Love"._


	23. Endings

Winry's mother read her a story every night before bed. Their favorite was the one about the peasant girl who knows what the king will say before he says it, though Winry also enjoyed tales of disguised princesses hiding among the geese or beneath a cloak of a thousand furs.

Now story-time is over, but Winry dreams of her parents lying in a glass coffin and knows she cannot kiss them awake unless she takes their place. A cold touch on her lips wakes her instead; she slaps Den's muzzle away and never apologizes.

The fairy-books gather dust.


	24. Obsessions

Winry trails Ed and Al into the pharmacy and buys a bag of peppermints while they debate whether to spend their pooled allowance on boric acid or saltpeter. Ed's capable of all-day arguments with himself, so after five minutes Winry abandons the Elrics for the Morton Bros. (Mechanics) across the street. There, mints-all-around purchases a ringside seat for the diagnosis of an ailing tractor -- not as interesting as helping Granny, but a lot more fun than kicking her heels at the druggist's.

Walking home, she ignores the sighs and grumbles about how long _she_ made _them_ wait.


	25. Ever the Latter End of Joy

One tree in the Elrics' backyard is unique. Their father found it, or perhaps transmuted it, and planted it for their mother. It flowers, but never fruits. All its petals seem to fall at once in late April, whirling down to skim across the porch and stipple the new grass. Ed remembers shaking the lower branches to add to the fragrant storm, while Al squirmed and laughed in their mother's arms. _Snow, Mama, snow!_

That tree burns with the house, of course -- Ed sees to it. Al says nothing, but furtively catches a flying cluster of ashes on his palm.


	26. Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze

Riesenbuhl breeds no elephants, and riding slow, steady plow-horses bareback is no challenge, and Den growls when Winry tries to tie old curtains around her middle for a tutu, so the Elric brothers toss the backyard swing over its branch until the seat hangs higher than their heads. Ed wins the first turn because it was his idea; the others boost him up.

There he discovers how much more swiftly the bob's angular momentum changes when the axis of a pendulum is shortened. But while Al laughs and Winry cheers, he'll never admit how little that knowledge delights him.

* * *

**Author's Note:**_ This story was written in response to a challenge by D. M. Evans to explain a picture of a nervous young Ed crouching bent-kneed on a moving swing, while Al and Winry watch, all smiles, from below. Many thanks to Dr. Bailey for the physics lesson._


	27. The Art of Language

Overnight, the adults claim, the mercury fell with an audible thud, but Ed tells Al it was just a dead tree blowing over in the windbreak. Danny Cutter says it's cold enough to freeze the fecking nuts off a brass monkey, which seems equally implausible, but when Ed asks his mother about it, he learns instead that you can't blame other people for what you choose to say.

He further discovers that soap tastes terrible, but doesn't permanently wash impolite language out of your mouth. Also, when Danny licks the school flagpole, that poetic justice exists -- and it's fecking _sweet_.


	28. Whispers Down the Lane

Al overhears the whisper at the Rockbells' funeral: _They went to Ishbal and got themselves killed._

It follows Winry to school like a mosquito. _(They went to help ...)_ Boys point; girls titter. _(... in Ishbal ...)_ Everybody stares. And whispers.

_(_... _g__ot themselves killed.)_

Winry says she's proud of her parents -- says she's done crying. _(They were helping the Ishbalans ...)_ Maybe she doesn't hear the whisper. _(... got what was coming to them ...)_ Al hopes so. His hands stiffen, hating it, but you can't swat people like mosquitoes.

_(... do-gooders ... turncoats ...) _

Even if you want to.

Even if they deserve it.

_(... got themselves killed.)_


	29. Jove's Laughter

Ed can't understand it. When he races Winry, he's never the rotten egg. When Al's his opponent, they tie, mostly, and argue about who smells worse. But in a three-way contest, Winry beats Al every time. "Why d'you keep losing to her?" Ed finally asks.

"Well," Al hedges, "Winry doesn't like being called stinky -- "

"She knows she isn't really!" Ed interrupts, flushing as his brother smirks. "You cheater! I'm gonna tell her you cheat!"

Al ruffles up. "You do and I'll pound you!"

Winry thoroughly enjoys her subsequent brief winning streak, while the brothers bask, Janus-faced, in her condescension.


	30. A Circle Grazing the Confines of Space

Ed is bo-o-o-o-ored: it's raining; his mom's busy cleaning; the radio's broadcasting stupid soap operas; and Al's forgotten how to play hide'n'seek. There he is, lying in plain view on the carpet, reading. "You're it," Ed says, prodding him in the ribs. "C'mon, start counting."

"In a minute," Al answers, turning the page.

Ed stares down at a familiar illustration; didn't _he_ once have something like it tacked above his desk? "Where'd you get that?" he asks.

Al points; Ed grabs his own alchemy book. Its leaves hold nothing of his father -- only sufficient enchantment to enthrall his restless mind.


	31. The Secret of Eternal Life

_This is for Denise. Obviously._

* * *

Ever since the Elric brothers took up alchemy, they've been insufferable. They expect Winry to listen attentively while they drone on about it, but they tune her out whenever she mentions automail. Outnumbered, she pouts until Ed begins lecturing about the Elixir Vitae, the dram of immortality. "Oh, I know all about _that_," she interrupts. "Granny drinks it every morning."

Ed's mouth falls open, Al's eyes bug out, and they both demand, _"How does she make it?"_

"We-e-e-ll," Winry drawls, "first she grinds the beans -- "

A worm down her back is no equivalent exchange. Not even close.


	32. Calenture

Al hates taking care of the lawn. The mower's weight increases turn by turn and sunlight broils his straining muscles. No-see-'ems rise in dusty clouds of pollen to harass him, while perspiration collects in the crook of every joint. He imagines his mother recoiling in horror from the scarlet, seething, boy-shaped welt that was once her son.

But instead she greets him with a smile and a pitcher of lemonade. He holds a cool, sweaty glassful against his cheek, listening to the ice pop as it melts -- and to her praise, sweeter than cut grass drying where it lies.


	33. Learner's Permit

_This is for Artemis Rae -- happy belated birthday!_

* * *

As soon as Winry can reach the pedals and still see over the dash, her grandmother teaches her to drive. The black jalopy her father left behind bucks around the yard, recording Winry's slow mastery of double-declutching in uprooted turf. At length Pinako clears her to take the road, but only in emergencies. "You can keep practicing out back," she says, locking up the garage. "No passengers. And don't let those Elric boys talk you into giving them a turn, either."

Winry sighs. "Yes, Granny."

The next day she refunds Ed the cens he paid for his first lesson.


End file.
